Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by Petrames, UmbreonGurl, aflowerydeath, and drowsyivy.
"Isn't all that rage so ugly? And isn't it mine, still? Good god, isn't it mine?"
— Ashe Vernon, "Buried"
Our first missions come and go — a garden weeded, a fence fixed, a message routed from one part of town to another.
Utatane-sensei takes us out to dinner.
It does nothing to ease the awkward tension that's arisen between me and the boys. Well, I say arisen, but by all intents and purposes, it was already there, just rising more with the fact that I refuse to talk unless spoken to directly.
I don't have the energy. I don't have the patience.
I don't have the time. There's more missions to make, more katas to train, a long, long road to walk leading to the day my brother puts a sword through his stomach and leaves his corpse for his five year old to find, and somehow I have to avert that.
I have to live to avert that.
I can't do it if I'm dead.
Cosmic webs and cosmic scenes. Only seven years old this time around, and already, I'm running out of time.
Where's the need for friends when the sword of Damocles hangs over my brother's head like the fiery condemnation of the only god this world truly has?
Cosmic webs and cosmic tragedies and this whole damn world is a tragedy in various stages of happening.
"Tsutako, tell us about your family, won't you?" Utatane-sensei breaks the silence that's fallen since Dan wrapped up talking about how his little sister had landed a bull's eye with her kunai training the other day.
I open my mouth to begin. "I have a mom, Hatake Ume, a dad, Hatake Hayashi, and an older brother, Hatake Sakumo."
As far as I know, we have no other living family.
But then, maybe they were just off on a ten year s-rank mission and no one was at liberty to tell me they existed.
Maybe I have a whole uncle or aunt or long lost sibling out there that I'd never even heard of. Maybe Mom and Dad had a first set of kids who died young and aren't mentioned and that's why Saku-nii and I are so strangely young compared to the age they happen to be at the moment.
The secrets buried in the back garden of our family history aren't exactly things we discuss.
Utatane-sensei sighs. "You know very well that's not what I meant when I said tell us about your family, Tsutako."
What else is there to say? I think to myself, even though I do not say this aloud. That would be back talk, and back talk is rude.
"Your dad is Hatake Hayashi?" Dan asks. I can see the stars in his eyes, the reverent awe of someone who has not in fact, ever met my dad and only happened to hear that he was a war hero high up in the ranks and in extremely high demand. "Can I meet him?"
It almost makes me wonder who he thought my dad was this entire time, and also why he'd adopted Dad as a personal hero, someone he wanted to meet.
In all honesty, I'm not entirely sure why anyone would.
"He's not home."
Two weeks after coming home and sleeping on the couch or the floor for that span of time, Dad had been called away again in the middle of the night.
I can see Dan trying to open his mouth for another question, but it's really best to head this off at the pass right now. "I don't know when he's coming back, so no you can't."
And even if I did know, woe be it for anyone else to know that there's trouble in paradise.
There are some secrets too secret to share.
Or maybe, if we're talking about our family secrets, that would be exactly all of them.
I haven't seen Mom in three days and the last time I did, it'd been in passing as she heated up water for instant coffee in the microwave, and she'd barely made any sign of acknowledgement at all as I struggled into the house with my profusion of cucumbers, muddy from running too many laps in the rain.
Saku-nii is gone too, some other C-rank mission taking him away as his jounin-sensei prepped his team for the Chunin Exams this summer.
Given that it's held in Kusa in a few month's time, I've no doubt that I won't see him around much either.
Our family of four spins on entirely different orbits than each other. In another life, maybe I would've reached out and tried to glue our disparate pieces together, holding onto whatever scraps of family I could find.
But I am tired.
And in this life, I let our orbits spin out into the silence of greater voids.
My mutiny at having to actually describe my familial situation must've shown on my face, because while Utatane-sensei presses her lips together and a crease arises between her brows, she doesn't push me further.
Instead, she follows me home.
I make my way through the dingy alley down to Kobayashi-san's shop and wonder if I could persuade Miyoboshi-san, the tailor, to teach me how to repair the rips in my mesh shirts instead of taking it into him all the time.
But then, maybe he doesn't want to lose a customer, he's got fair few of those as it is. No one down here is wealthy, but I'd never been comfortable in the lighter, airier, bigger shops closer to the center of the city anyway.
I come — I came — from places where grime didn't matter as much as the smile behind the counter, the whisper of belonging, of being someone known and loved. And while I cannot say for certain that I am loved, at least here I am known, known as Hatake Tsutako and not just as a paying customer.
It's worth more than gold.
I ignore Utatane-sensei's existence behind me the best I can. She hasn't tried to talk to me, and I haven't tried to talk to her ever since we finished eating dinner in the barbeque place.
Kobayashi-san bristles when he sees her though, something of a fire in his black eyes. "Who're you?" he asks, his arms crossed over his bloody apron, frown carving deep lines into his face until he looks far older than he has right to be. "If y'ain't a customer, y'can wait outside, can'tcha?"
Strange how I didn't really notice his lower alleys accent until he had to speak to my sensei. Most of the time, all we're talking about is what I'm buying or if I need help sharpening my kunai.
"That's my jounin-sensei, Kobayashi-san." I tell him, because most of the time, civilians tend to offer shinobi their respects.
And I suppose I've always figured that that's why Kobayashi Yuuto was fond of me. He'd have probably been a shinobi if he wasn't also deaf in one ear.
He sharpens kunai like he knows what he's doing though he's forgotten the exact idea of using them.
He doesn't budge a centimeter. "So? Ain't a customer is she?"
Utatane-sensei stays silent for a moment more, before I hear her slowly exhale and then the jingle of the bell over the doorway as she steps outside into the street.
Down here in the lower alleys, it's a bit of a stab in the dark to figure out who's really out wandering the streets, civilian or shinobi, but I like it here.
I like it here because it's one of the few places in Konoha I've found that reminds me a little bit like home.
Even though no one speaks Chinese here, either Canto or Mando or any other form of Chinese, the lower alleys remind me of Chinatown, with its curved tiled roofs and little porches, the cobbled together look of the street, the way all the storefronts here are cramped and squished together looking, the way red paint flakes off of the two little pseudo-columns outside of Kobayashi's shop.
It's quieter here though, no crowds of people to lose yourself in. I miss the sounds of the bustle, the noise and the lights, but at the same time, I can't find myself in the crowds closer to the center of the city either, just another face, just another life.
I linger uneasily in the inbetween.
"She following you for a reason, Hatake-chan?" Kobayashi-san asks as he reaches into the freezer to unhook the two chickens I buy every week. "I can always send you out the back door if she is, and file some complaint or other with the military police."
It's more than I'd expected him to care. He's a civilian, this sort of territorial in the face of shinobi comes with its own set of woes.
"No, you don't have to." I reach for the chickens. "She's my sensei, complaining wouldn't do anything."
I don't miss the way his eyes narrow, and his frown deepens, though he doesn't say too much afterwards. "Uh-huh, Hatake-chan."
I shrug, give him my attempt at a smile. "It's only the truth, Kobayashi-san." I've been a liar for a long time, even though I try to tell the truth.
So I try to tell him the truth.
"Uh-huh." He says again and rings my purchase up for the family tab. "You watch out for yourself now, Hatake-chan."
"I'll try." I hook two fingers through the handles of the plastic bags, packed with enough ice to keep the chickens cold til I get home.
Dallying aside, it's time to go home. There's still plants to weed, another row of beans I want to stake properly, dishes to wash, laundry to do, katas to practice before bed. Just because my sensei was following me like a silent shadow didn't mean that there weren't any chores to do and the future to prepare for.
I stake and trellis my bean plants with wooden stakes I'd bought from the local greengrocer and ninja wire I'd co-opted from one of Dad's old packs beaten up enough and with a severe hole in the bottom so I know he's tossed it into the back of the cupboard in the dojo and completely forgotten about it, backing up my trellis with a long, long cord of twine.
Utatane-sensei passes me another stake wordlessly.
It's been more than she's been doing before.
I don't speak. Sometimes, I would sing while hammering stakes into the ground, but given that generally it would be in some garbled form of Chinglish, whatever I could remember of both English and Cantonese after living some seven years in a place where nobody spoke either, singing isn't something I tend to do with other people.
At least kanji still reminded me of how to write certain words.
Still, year by year, the memories that came from the past run together and bleed into one another like paint mixed with too much water, suddenly red's touched blue and now everything between them is purple tinted.
Which makes no damned sense because I am haunted by the past. By my past — both the presence of it in the last life and the lack of it in this one. By living in a story's backstory.
Down the line, down the line, it's not that many plants, so I can afford to care for them all adequately, although I have no idea what I'll do when I have to go away for longer periods of time.
Down the line, down the line, unspeakable horrors make all the world run red. The drums of war are sounding on higher mountains in the distance, and not much longer can we linger in the valley of peace.
We'd lost the Nidaime a few years back, a figure of the stuff of legends. The Great War had brought conflict on a scale that no one before had seen.
Armies had marched, blood had spilled, and a few years into this shallow, frail peace, the whole world holds its breath, asking for an end to the carnage and killing.
And here I kneel, with my hands in the dirt, and I remember the future where four wars tear apart this earth in the span of less than seventy years.
I remember destruction and bloodshed and orphans and massacres.
I remember it had been background for sufficient tragedy, a breeding ground for sob stories and sympathetic fates, and I grind my teeth about the god penning this narrative and try to put it away before I explode with rage.
On, then, on to more mundane thoughts.
Do I ask the neighbors, whom I've never been close with, to come in and water my plants? Do I even trust them to do it correctly?
Do I kill my plants because I'll be away and won't let anyone else in to care for them like the worst sort of gatekeeper?
There's only one answer to that.
At least, Kyogi can move and find his own food if I remember to leave it out for him.
The plants can't even do that.
"When does your mother come home?" I glance up at Utatane-sensei, dirt clinging to my fingers and getting under my nails as I weed the tomatoes.
The last time I'd seen Mom was three days ago, which means… "Two nights from now." Question answered, I begin tackling the weeds on the other side on the tomato plant.
She draws a sharp breath, but doesn't say anything.
When I next look up, she's gone.
The first thought that passes through my mind is thank god followed quickly by Kyogi should be fed.
I glare at the remaining tomato plants (unpruned) and wish that they could possibly be pruned without staining my hands an unfortunate terrible green which will soon oxidize into black and be a true pain to wash off. A layer of black grime which, once dried, cracked and got everywhere like an agent of persistent damage, ready to dye the porcelain sink a grimy gray color, forcing me to wash it off as well.
Nails clatter across the floor when I throw open the door. "Kyogi!"
He shoves his black nose into my stomach, paws on my thighs. He's a small dog, with floppy ears, a long face, and serious dark eyes.
I trace the white blaze on his snout, laughing when he licks my palm. "Don't, I'm all muddy." He doesn't pay that any of the attention that it's due. "I'll feed you! Stop trying to eat dirt."
He's not a young dog anymore, we're the same age, give or take a few months, but sometimes he's energetic enough that he could pass for a large puppy.
I learned to run by running after him. His energy and enthusiasm for life had brightened me in a time when there wasn't much to be bright for. And I will always love that.
I will always love that.
We take our first C-rank mission guarding a merchant caravan out to the Land of Rivers. It's slow work, and slow travel, and try as I might to be excited about actually leaving the village for the first time in my life —
The Land of Rivers is muddy.
And swampy.
And there are about fifteen mosquitoes out to suck my blood.
And Dan has been staring worriedly into the underbrush for the past half hour.
And Shinku is muttering under his breath as he swats at his ear.
And there's a soggy squelch squelch squelch of watery mud between my toes, small particles of silt and sand gritting against the skin of my foot, each step forward sinking about two inches deep in mud before the process invariably repeats again with the other foot.
This morning we'd stopped seven times to push nine different wagons of various materials out of the rut they were stuck in due to the mud.
The outlook was just, in general, not fantastic.
And it was only getting worse.
Fording a river that did not have a bridge with a caravan of some 17 wagons did not make for a good scene. For one, I could not trust that Dan would not in fact, slip and drown himself considering he had ended up face down in the mud this morning, and for another, it was a remote location, one that relied on one portion of the water flow being shallower and sandier than the rest, a middling town too poor for a bridge.
The goods were valuable though.
Spices from the temperate climate in the Land of Fire always were.
That made for a bad combination.
Horses strained against the current. Water sloshed over our feet. Gravel cut deep into our sandals. Shouts of both warning and excited success rang through the air. The creak of old wood and the shifting of packages made it hard to really pay much attention to anything than the success or failure of each wagon to make the crossing.
I scouted on the opposite bank of the river, patrolling the three wagons that had already made their way across.
Shinku guarded the river passing, standing waist deep in the rushing water.
At this stage of the game, water walking would just be a waste of chakra. Best just keep it to the basics for now, just in case there were foreign ninja. It wasn't like any one of us was a chakra powerhouse with enough extra to throw around without any thought, not even Utatane-sensei, though this I'd only learned during our mission briefing.
This was our first time out, so there'd been a rundown of our meager skill set, and Utatane-sensei had outlined her own to us. It was enough to shock us into awe, mostly, but it still had its weaknesses.
Tanigakure was a weak village, and reclusive enough that they should not be a threat this far north of their general location, but suspicion and general paranoia were better than being dead.
Utatane-sensei and Dan brought up the rear where a large portion of the wagons had gathered in anticipation of the river crossing.
I spot the gleam of metal from the other side of a covered wagon. Through the slats of the wooden boards, it shines, a sharp contrast to the murky greenness of the damp jungle that is the Land of Rivers.
I round the side of the wagon just in time to spot at least one bandit lurking in the greenery.
The gleam was nothing more than a pitchfork, and in the space between thoughts, something from my past life rears its ugly head and says that I should hardly kill someone who couldn't even properly defend themselves.
But then reality reasserts itself.
If this merchant caravan didn't hire ninja, the people trying to make an honest living might die.
Besides, if I did nothing, we would fail this mission.
And none of us could afford to fail our first C-rank mission.
My hand drops to the hilt of my sword. I pull my shoulders back face forward while walking, adopting the swagger of someone who is patrolling but not in any way, concerned about what is about to take place.
A loose grip. A leisurely walk. Shoulders thrown back, chin raised, eyes for the most part, looking forward.
There's no way to sound the alarm, as spread out as our team is, without prompting the bandits to start their attack, like dropping one domino and starting a cascading chain of chaos.
It's up to me now.
How many? Spreading my senses outwards, I start counting.
One there, gleam of a pitchfork among the murky green. Another there, underneath a shrub shaking from something more than wind. Another there, marked by a crack in the greenery, branch still bleeding sap.
I make my way lazily forwards, still counting as I go.
Perhaps they could've deceived civilians — being no more than civilians themselves — but even someone who had the bare minimum of shinobi training could see how someone had been here.
Disturbances in the underbrush, broken twigs, crushed leaves, the unfortunate gleam of a metal weapon catching in the sun.
I count five.
One step.
Two.
In one movement, I launch myself towards the first attacker in the thickness of the jungle floor.
The sword Dad had given me slices through the pitchfork's handle like a kitchen knife through a frozen tomato.
I turn with the momentum, bringing the blade across the back of the man's knee before he has the time to react.
It hits bone. I feel the shudder of a sudden slowing in my wrists, all the way up to my elbow, but this kata has a follow through.
Follow through.
I pull the sword from the wound.
Blood flies.
It'd happened fast enough that there hadn't been time for a scream.
He goes down, a disabling wound, enough that he could no longer attack. I bring the hilt of my sword down on the back of his skull for insurance.
Once.
Twice.
Wrists gone numb with the shudder of force it took.
Onto the next.
A slash through the abdomen. I bring the blade across the neck as the figure crumples.
I do not think about what this means.
The next figure manages to bring his weapon, a hoe, down in my general direction.
I parry the square blade with the flat of my sword, metal screaming against metal, arms straining.
By now, Shinku had picked up the sounds of the fight over the rush of the river.
A kunai sprouts from the figure's throat.
Another down.
Onto the next.
A.N. There's...going to be a lot to unpack after this mission. Mostly because Tsutako doesn't have a real support system so much as she has people who think that they're her support system.
I've been trying to update stuff as quickly as possible! The semester's just started so there's definitely a little bit more breathing room than I had last semester.
Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited and followed. You all are really lovely, and that brings me a lot of joy.
~Tavina
